Twenty-three countries have been named by the World Bank as part of the Education For All Fast Track, an attempt to encourage developing countries to provide quality primary school education for all children by 2015, a World Bank statement said.
Some 18 of the countries from the sub-Saharan Africa, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East are eligible to receive additional financing to support their primary education programmes.
By helping them strengthen their educational systems, and removing key bottlenecks in school completion, some 17 million children currently out of school, could have the opportunity to complete primary education, the statement said.
To qualify for financing under EFA, countries must prioritise primary education and embrace policies that improve the quality and efficiency of their primary education systems.
Five countries are those with the largest numbers of children not in school including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo (a country which does not yet have a World Bank programme) and Nigeria, the statement said.
According to the statement, these countries account for 50 million of the estimated worldwide total of 113 million children out of school. The World Bank and donors will work with them to address gaps that will need to be resolved for them to be eligible for Education For All (EFA) grant financing support.
"We are making an important start with these 23 countries," World Bank President James Wolfensohn said. "More than 67 million children in these countries have never set foot in a classroom and many more drop out before completing even 5 or 6 years of primary school, which is the minimum to be able to read, write and do basic arithmetic, and to provide the basis for further learning," he said.
The World Bank estimates that the world's eight most developed countries and the rest of the international community would need to commit approximately US $3 billion a year in additional financing over the next 10 years to help all low-income developing countries meet the Millennium education goal of leaving no child without quality education.
At the World Education Forum in 2000, donors promised that no country with a viable and sustainable plan for achieving EFA would be unable to implement it for a lack of resources. This commitment was reaffirmed in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this year.
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